They are, instead, timeless narratives, perfectly current in their story line. They’re suffused with detail and a lot of wit. And they repay close examination. (Take another look at Slide 8 — you may have missed the baby the first time.) So it’s a special pleasure to find them as 16-by-20-inch prints at the Sasha Wolf Gallery in Chelsea. The prints were made by Mr. McDonough, a friend and associate of Tod Papageorge and Garry Winogrand, who is now 69 and living in Brooklyn.

Even Mr. McDonough allows that enlargements helped him discover elements in his own compositions. Here, from a new monograph by Umbrage Editions, “New York Photographs, 1968-1978,” is his description of Slide 3:

There was this fellow — he looked like an anarchist, or more accurately, a cartoon version of one. In fact, he was an art student studying the sculptures. But he was taking liberties. He was touching the art, which is, of course, taboo in any museum. … I took a few pictures. Later, in viewing the enlarged print I saw that the three sculptures of heads, each with a beard slightly fuller than the other, connected. My subject had the bushiest beard and it was as if he were looking at his predecessors. But … I could only see this later, in the enlargement.

Ms. Wolf sees even more in the picture. “One of the dangers of street photography is the one-liner,” she said, as we stood in front of “The Roman Room at the Met” and looked at that bushy-bearded art student. “I do laugh, but I’m so moved by his dedication.”

The evident compassion — or, at least, the absence of condescension — is one of the appealing qualities of Mr. McDonough’s work. Another is the disciplined formalism he brings to an inherently ad hoc form.

Paul McDonough“Hispanic Day Parade.” 1974.

“Ordinarily in street photography, everything is askew and a mess, and you forgive it because the subject is so great,” Ms. Wolf said. “Here, you don’t have to forgive it.”

By way of example, she took me over to “Couple Kissing on Street Corner” (Slide 4). Like so many of Mr. McDonough’s pictures, the composition fills the frame, from edge to edge. There are a half dozen discrete tableaux unfolding, besides the central event of a man and woman whose kiss renders them oblivious to the bustle.

“It’s like a whole film in one frame,” Ms. Wolf said. “You have to do a little work to fill it in, but not a lot.

“I’m very careful that this not have anything to do with nostalgia,” she said, “which is not to say I don’t enjoy it when other people have that experience. Because I do.”

“New York City, 1973-1978″ opened last week and runs through Jan. 8 at the Sasha Wolf Gallery, 548 West 28th Street, in Manhattan. Sharing the space is the Foley Gallery, which is showing “The Course of History: Götterdämmerung,” photographs by Bart Michiels of the Eastern European battlefields of Russia and Germany. As rendered by Mr. Michiels, these seemingly tranquil landscapes exude an ominous, brooding darkness, as if forever misshapen by the cauldrons of blood that were spilled across them. They’re not to be missed; not that you could, given their size. (The print below, for example, is three-and-a-half by four feet.)